It is essential to reduce unnecessary interference in a wireless communication system where users share a common frequency for transmission or reception of data. Effective power control reduces interference to a reasonable level while maintaining satisfactory signal quality for a given radio link connection.
Power control typically consists of two stages: Outer Loop Power Control (OLPC); and Inner Loop Power Control (ILPC). The OLPC controls a target signal to interference ratio (SIR) to keep the received quality as close as possible to a target quality. The ILPC controls transmission power to keep the received SIR of each dedicated channel (DPCH) as close as possible to a target SIR. In other words, the output of the OLPC is an updated target SIR used for the ILPC.
A typical OLPC measures Block Error Rate (BLER) as an indication of the quality of the received signal. The BLER is the ratio of number of erroneous transport blocks to the total number of transmitted transport blocks. Quality targets for transmitted data are determined based on the BLER, for example a target BLER of 1%. The OLPC sets a target SIR according to the required quality for a given service, such as BLER. A Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) is used to determine whether there are errors in a particular transmission. Basically, user data is segmented in transport blocks for transmission and CRC bits are appended to each transport block. This data scheme is used at the receiver to determine if an error occurred.
A known OLPC process, the jump algorithm, controls power by adjusting a target SIR based on the BLER. However, the jump algorithm is still problematic in that calls having high quality requirements experience a BLER significantly above a desired BLER. Moreover, this problem occurs more frequently when short calls transmit their smaller number of transport blocks.
It would be desirable to improve OLPC with a jump algorithm that significantly reduces the frequency of calls experiencing a higher error rate.